Rust like color on my sand?

[CourtNjoeZreef]

What I am wondering about is the nitrates. With all that GHA sucking in nitrates I would think they would be low, yet they still measure at 20. Where is it all coming from?

They are sucking the nitrates so I am dosing nitrates in to keep them stable for the sake of coral growth and dinos. When I let them bottom out the tank gets covered in a brown slime when I raise it back above 10ppm or so they disappear

 

[CourtNjoeZreef]

@brandon429 so I used realreef rock.. it is incredibly not smooth. Would it be a smart idea to slowly change to something else?

 

[brandon429]

I've seen many tanks use it just fine so I'd keep it. When grazers don't work well for one reason or another this type of hand guiding is what safely resets the tank for a clean attempt round two

 

[CourtNjoeZreef]

I've seen many tanks use it just fine so I'd keep it. When grazers don't work well for one reason or another this type of hand guiding is what safely resets the tank for a clean attempt round two

What animals would benefit me most bringing in? snails? Cucumber? i seem to have a rather small CUC in comparison to... well every single one i have ever read about

 

[brandon429]

truly its lucky when the arrangements work to avoid the cleanup requirement, I dont have any likely candidates. in some tanks margarita snails work, mostly they don't so sorry no recommends there due to inconsistencies. what the animals certainly do is add to waste loading already present in the system so the key changeup in rip cleans is the animals are never used to clear the invasion, they're used in the clean condition to hopefully prevent round 2/only added after the rip clean when the scape is clear and nothing to feed on. they'll feed on fish food till you get a new crop of growth to see if they eat it too.

make sure topoff water is perfect ro/di, that lights aren't too heavy on white spectrum/things that select for algae but thats all done in the clean condition. nothing removes and exports all the growth other than the rip clean.

 

[CourtNjoeZreef]

So my lighting schedule.
I'll put pictures of the led schedule
I have a hybrid fixture with 4 t5
2 blue 1 actinic 1 coral blue plus

I'm probably going to replace the coral blue with a blue since that has white in it (I think ) the actinic idk warms the tank up a bit (or is that the partially white one?)

 

[brandon429]

that looks fine to me, high blue low whites. not everybody ascribes to that change its just a light pattern I think is worth considering. it doesnt hurt the tank to run blue it just is annoying look for some, they run more whites. in challenge situations its a nice hedge, and can be undone with a setting slide quickly